The Internet is about content. Content being accessed, published, indexed, analyzed, secured, purchased, stolen, vandalized, etc. Whether the content is white-papers, on-line books, catalogs, real-time games, address books, streaming audio and video, etc., it is content that people and cyber-agents are seeking. The future of the Internet lies not in bandwidth or capacity, but rather the ability to retrieve relevant content. Technology that allows fast and accurate access to relevant content will be used by the masses of carbon and silicon Internet users. Not because it is a better mouse-trap, but because controlled access to relevant content will allow the Internet to thrive, survive, and continue its explosive growth. Fast and accurate semantic access to Internet content will determine who rules the next Internet era.
Caught between the sheer (and ever growing) volume of content, the huge and rapidly increasing number of Internet users, and a growing sophistication in the demands of those users, the current TCP/IP infrastructure and architecture is showing its inadequacies—it is a victim of its own success. One of the many strategies under consideration by the Internet community for redressing these inadequacies is to build intelligence into the network. Directory Services and Caching are two prime examples of intelligent network components. Adaptive routing with route caching is another example of an intelligent network component.
Yet another example of network intelligence that is receiving close attention these days is the characterization of content by its meaning (semantics). The obvious advantages that accrue with even a moderately successful semantic characterization component are such that almost everyone is tempted to dip a toe in the water. But assigning semantics to information on the Internet is the kind of undertaking that consumes vast amounts of resources.
Accordingly, a need remains for a way to assign semantic meaning to data without consuming large quantities of resources, and for a way to improve semantic understanding as information develops.